This is the time of year when we all become sheep and make that list of best practices for the next year. Like psychic predictions, most of them are trashed before the year comes to an end. Why do so many of us waste so much time saying “yes” to things we know will fall by the wayside before too long?
We are so conditioned to starting the New Year fresh and ready for breakthroughs we make our one to ten or one to twenty list and then put an action plan on paper. And then, the burdens and toils of the day take over and somehow, we get into the same old, same old rut.
The reason? Often we take on the whole world. We will become the beautiful, energetic people who will make our fortune this year, just like the ones in all the magazines. Yet, our patterns, those old nagging behaviors from the past creep in and voila! we look back on the year and find we are not so different than we were 365 days ago.
Perhaps we are doing it all wrong. Before we look to the future, maybe we need to look to the past and learn from it. So many philosophers have used a variation of “if we do not look to the past and learn from it, we are bound to repeat it”.
So, instead of resolutions, take a look back to see where you have repeated behavior patterns over and over and look for some revelations about yourself. Then take one aspect of how you respond to others and make that a priority for at least the first six months of the year. One is really enough. Once you start to change just one habit pattern, other behaviors will magically change without effort.
If each of us took the time to change just one thing, it would make a huge difference both in the family and in the workplace. You can learn about your patterns by taking the pattern aware quiz on my website www.sylvialafair.com. Once you have taken the test, call our office for a half-hour free consult by one of our facilitators to help you decide what you want to tackle first.
Sure, there are only a few days left in this year. So what? Everyday is a new day, and you can start to make miraculous changes in the blink of an eye. We are available to help. Let’s make this crazy world a more user-friendly place and learn about ourselves in depth, rather than making mindless resolutions that are usually broken before the month of January is history.